Text: Anonymous, “[Introductory Note to ‘The Raven’],” Eliza Cook's Journal (London, UK), vol. 7, no. 170, July 31, 1852, p. 223

[page 223, column 1, continued:]

WE subjoin the remarkable poem of “The Raven,” by Edgar A. Poe. It is the finest single poem of its kind that the poets of America have yet produced. Longfellow's Evangeline is the most thoroughly American in its characteristics, its pictures of scenery, and of prairie life. Indeed, that may be regarded as the one genuine native product of American poetic influences. But Poe's “Raven” is more radiant of genius; it is a dark drama of passion compressed into the compass of a song; it is a reflection of the ill- starred life of the poet himself, — a brief record of blasted hopes and unfulfilled longings — full of wild pathos and gloom. The treatment of the subject. is highly original, and yet it is most simple. Take the elements of the poem — a raven, with his one, taught, monotonous phrase, perched in the poet's chamber, and responding with it to all the deep questionings and impatient feelings of his master, — that is all. Yet we have a human heart read by it, and though nothing definite is told, we have the sense of a tragedy before and after — Love and Life, Love and Loss. Does it not shadow, too, the hopeless Despair [column 2:] which settled over the poet's life, and the Remorse induced by his own unhappy career? The sunny past had fled, past had fled, the memory of happy innocence rankled in deep wounds; the joy and hope of life's spring-time had departed to return “Nevermore.” We cannot but feel that the author projected himself into the poem: there is a mystic deep melancholy in it, which fills the reader's mind with awe and gloom. It should be read by the twilight, in the deep embrasure of a window, or by the firelight, alone in the still evening hours.

[[Then, is reprinted the full text of “The Raven”]]